


Snowflakes

by DoreyG



Category: Blake & Avery Series - M. J. Carter
Genre: Canadian Shack, Confessions, First Kiss, Huddling For Warmth, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:48:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28028808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/pseuds/DoreyG
Summary: “Does this usually happen in England?” Blake asked, staring out of the window with a wrinkled nose.
Relationships: William Avery/Jeremiah Blake
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Snowflakes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lebateleur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lebateleur/gifts).



“Does this usually happen in England?” Blake asked, staring out of the window with a wrinkled nose.

‘This’ being one of the worst blizzards that I could remember since my childhood. A sudden wall of whirling white that’d come down as we were travelling back from an investigation just off my father’s estate. Not quite the introduction to Cornwall for Blake that I’d been hoping for, once I’d finally convinced him to leave London and visit me here, but also hardly unexpected considering the time of year and the darkness of the sky when we’d departed. It could’ve been a lot worse, we could’ve been caught out in it fully instead of managing to find a recently abandoned cottage basically right in front of us.

“More often than you would think,” I answered him, watching fondly as he peered out of the window as if his glowering would stop the snow from showering down. “It happened at least once a year when I was a child, sometimes more often if I was unlucky. I remember countless days where I woke up, ran to the window and was greeted with a world that was entirely white.”

“Sounds wonderful,” Blake said, very dryly, and glanced back to meet my eyes. He was still quite obviously tense, but for once my light mood seemed to relax him just a little. “And how did you deal with them when you were a child?”

“Oh, the usual childhood pursuits. Throwing snowballs, making snow angels, sleighing, skating on the lake, making a general nuisance of myself until my mother practically wept.” I smiled reminiscently, and then moved on hurriedly as Blake greeted said smile with a strangely intense stare. “And, on the rare occasions when it got as bad as this, staying indoors and feeling decidedly disgruntled about the whole thing. Sometimes, the only thing you can do is shelter in place until it’s done.”

Blake blinked at me, and then frowned afresh. Obviously his brief foray into the world of relaxation wasn’t to last for long. “Shelter here?”

I had no idea why he sounded so reluctant about it, truth be told. The cottage was abandoned, yes, but it seemed recently so. It was still dry and well insulated, and while it was dusty there was very little mess to be found. There were two fairly big rooms downstairs, one of which contained a fire, and one small one upstairs that contained a bed. It was all perfectly pleasant, to my mind.

“It could be worse,” I said mildly, which still caused Blake to roll his eyes in as heartfelt a manner as if I’d thrown a full on tantrum. Honestly, sometimes I thought that the man lived to provoke. “I would’ve thought that it was rather finer than you were used to, truth be told.”

“It’s a bit small,” Blake said, frankly bizarrely considering the places he’d lived in during our acquaintance, and then sent me a slightly awkward glance as if he was absolutely dreading what he had to say next. “There’s only one bedroom, for instance.”

“So?” I asked, genuinely baffled, and couldn’t hold back another grin as Blake blinked at me in a shocked way. I had rarely seen him scandalized before, usually our roles were very much reversed in that regard, but I was hardly going to ignore an opportunity to make him so if it was offered up to me on a platter. “I was going to suggest that we share a bed anyway, even if this place had as many rooms as Buckingham Palace.”

Blake blinked, and then stared at me for several long and incredulous seconds. I felt a certain giddy sense of joy rise up within me at the sight, for evidently I really had shocked him. For once the bumbling country bumpkin had something to teach the urbane city man.

“The most important thing in this kind of blizzard is to keep warm. You know more than me about medicine, Jeremiah, you should realize how easily illness can set in if you’re already chilled.” I gestured at his damp clothes, which had been covered in snow in the brief time between the blizzard starting and us managing to find this place. “Come on, there’s no need to worry. It’ll be just like the Reform, except hopefully with a little less murder this time. We’ll snuggle down together, keep each other occupied until this blizzard is over and leave in much the same state that we entered.”

It took me a long few moments to realize that he was blushing at my words for some reason. The great Jeremiah Blake, blushing like a green lad in my presence! “Are you cracked?”

“Excuse me for trying to make this a bit more palatable for you.” I sniffed, but was hardly that offended. Blake looked appealing when he blushed, like he was a man who could be taken care of instead of a thorny ball of stubbornness who would always strive to be on his own. It made me want to look after him, to make a fool of myself just to make sure that he was okay “...Do you really mind the thought of us sharing a bed so much?”

“No, but-” The blush on his cheeks intensified, and I genuinely thought that he was about to unburden himself to me for a long moment. But no, Blake was as separate and unknowable as ever. He soon calmed himself, met my eyes again with a perfectly resigned expression. “It’s just not exactly what I would’ve chosen.”

I reached out to him, tentative at first but with more confidence as he didn’t immediately shy away from me. I took his upper arms in my hands, gently chafed them in an attempt to take some of the cold from him. “Isn’t that life?”

He watched me for a long few moments, tense under my fingertips, but then gave in with a weary sigh. The smirk that grew on his face then was absolutely wonderful, drawing me towards him in a most pleasant way. “Hark at the wise one, with his deep levels of cynicism. You would never believe that you were a green sprout of a soldier just a few years ago.”

“I learnt it all from you,” I said solemnly, and couldn’t hold back a grin as he snorted and fondly rolled his eyes at me. “Look, I promise that it won’t be that bad. These things are intense, but in my experience they generally blow themselves out fairly quickly. We’ll be here for a few days at most, barely long enough to run through the rations that my father’s housekeeper heaped on us before we left, and then we never have to see or think of this place ever again.”

Blake looked at me for a long moment, that smirk still lingering on his lips, and then finally gave in to my silent appeal with a body shaking sigh. Somehow the victory was even more sweet for the knowledge that I’d been the one to convince him. “I guess it’ll be fine. As long as we can forget afterwards, I mean.”

“That’s the spirit,” I said cheerily, and clapped his arms one last time - a casually brisk and bluff gesture, that somehow seemed wrong considering my relationship with Blake - before releasing him and finally taking a step back. “Now, let’s see if there’s dried wood stored anywhere. I’d like to get a nice fire going soon if at all possible.”

I turned on my heel and trotted off briskly, and felt yet another grin spread across my face as Blake grumbled but followed without any attempt to stop me. 

\--

In the end we managed to find a few armfuls of dry wood, and got a nice fire going. We sat before it for a while and talked idly, but in the end our experience getting through the blizzard and to our safe haven had tired us so we soon mutually decided to retire to bed. It was a little awkward at first, with both of us standing at the bottom of the bed and staring at each other uncertainly, but that was fixed as soon as I shrugged and climbed under the covers. Blake, never willing to be outdone, soon grumbled a little and joined me and we drifted off to sleep in a perfectly peaceful manner.

What was a great deal less peaceful was the next time I awakened, to find myself turned from my original position and entirely wrapped around Blake’s warm body.

Although perhaps it was less of an invasive wrapping, and more of a mutual entwining. My arms were tight around Blake’s back, but Blake’s fingers were firmly clawed in the ratty old nightshirt that I’d worn to bed. My chin was resting posessively on the top of Blake’s head, but Blake’s lips were pressed intimately against the hollow of my throat. My leg was thrown firmly over Blake’s hip, but Blake’s own legs were twined between mine in an extremely determined fashion. In my sleepy state it was very hard to work out where I began, and where Blake ended.

It was pleasant, I reflected drowsily, to hold Blake in my arms like this. It was a great deal too intimate to be proper, of course, but… There was nobody around to see or care, so there didn’t seem too much harm in admitting that I’d wanted to do this for a while. To see the softer side of Blake, to get in under his defences until he had no way to hide from me, maybe even to wrap my arms around him and squeeze until at least some of his customary heaviness went away.

Foolish thoughts, not to be indulged in for long, but pleasant ones. I spared a smile at my own sleepy fantasies, at my eternal desire to coddle a man who very firmly did not want to be coddled, and finally shifted to withdraw my arm from around him and retreat to my own side of the bed… Only to look down, and realize that Blake was already awake and watching me with intense eyes.

It should’ve been intensely awkward, but somehow there was only a strange sense of anticipation in the air. We stared at each other for a long moment in silence, and then Blake blew out a heavy breath and slowly unwound a hand from my nightshirt. I wasn’t expecting it, but he soon lifted it to my face and started to slowly trace along my jawline.

I had not been touched like this for a long time, even before Helen and I had mutually decided to stop sharing a bed. I gulped under the intimate touch of his fingers, opened my mouth with the vague feeling that I should say something. Maybe an apology, for straying into his space quite so far…

Blake swiftly pressed a finger against my lips, stopping the apology before it even began, and removed it only when I gave a jerky swallow and closed my mouth. His caress, for it could only be called a caress, continued from that point on. Went back to trailing over my jawline, my cheekbones, the curve of my nose, the shape of my lips instead of merely the centre of them. Endless intimate touches, more suited to lovers than to friends.

I should’ve been horrified, I was well aware, but instead there was a sense of inevitability to this that was strangely soothing. I found myself relaxing under his probing touch, melting into him. There was a sense of potential coming to the boil between us, a sense that anything and everything could happen if I was just brave enough to reach for it…

And I obviously wasn’t alone in thinking so. I shifted a little on the pillow, just to get myself a little more comfortable under the onslaught, and Blake’s eyes narrowed. In the next moment he was leaning forward, and sealing our lips firmly together.

I was actually stunned about that, no should’ve about it. I had never kissed a man before, had never even thought about it before this night and this bed, and initially it was both terrifying and strange. Blake’s lips were firmer than that of any woman I had ever dallied with, and his stubble rasped against my recently shaved face, and his body was hard against mine, and- and… A thousand things, a thousand little differences that I probably should’ve run a mile from now they were being presented to me.

But although it was a shock, and a most decided one at that, it wasn’t an unpleasant one. I discovered very quickly that I liked being kissed in a firm manner, enjoyed the sensation of rough stubble on my smooth skin, downright appreciated the feeling of a hard and eager body pressing against mine. It was pleasant to kiss Blake, so pleasant that I hardly had the words for how much it was already transporting me. And I was well aware of the fact that every time I’d trusted him before, every time I’d consciously put my life in his hands, it had always led to my world expanding in the most brilliant of ways… I made my decision after only a few moments of hesitation, pressed my hand firmly against his back and dragged him properly against me once more.

He stilled in shock for a moment, but he had never been the type of man to let an obvious possibility pass him by. Before long he was kissing me even harder than before, with a single minded focus seemingly designed to drive me entirely out of my mind. He even teased his tongue over the close of my lips, and - when I opened them in the spirit of curiosity - swept inside to ravish my mouth fully. It was initially strange, and then very quickly grew pleasant.

I groaned into his mouth, already swept away on the tide of his intensity, and realized that I desperately wanted more. I tried to drag him even closer for a moment, but then realised that our positions on our sides hardly lended themselves to full entanglement and growled into his mouth. From there it seemed a perfectly simple proposition to roll over onto my back, to drag him along with me in the hope that he had some ideas as to how to make this even more intense.

I was right, Blake was a man who was always full of ideas. He snarled into my mouth himself, more desperate and unchained than I’d ever witnessed him, and moved with me automatically. He threw one leg over my waist, and straddled me as he continued to kiss me. This position allowed far more of our bodies to be pressed together, and I revelled in it.

I felt on fire, driven half out of my mind by what we were doing together. I had gone to bed with people before, of course, but it had never been quite like this. I wanted to melt into him entirely, I wanted to lose myself in him and let him be lost in return, I wanted him to give me everything I could take and then a little more just to make things even better. I _wanted_.

Blake, for he was a very smart man who was apparently a lot more committed to my pleasure than I had ever noticed before, was obviously fully aware of this. He growled into my mouth again, sounding rather desperate himself, and reached down for the hem of my shirt. I stilled for a second, my heart pounding in my chest, but he wasn’t going for my cock where it was throbbing in between my legs. Instead he reached up further, slid his hands underneath my shirt until he found my nipples.

I had never been touched there before, had never even considered it as a place to be touched even though the women I had gone to bed with seemed to have enjoyed it most amply. I stilled against him for a moment, my mind racing, and then startled into a full bodied yelp as he grew tired of this and swiped his thumbs over them in a deliberate fashion. From there it was a headlong fall into losing my mind yet again.

Blake swiped his fingers over me again and again, obviously determined to wring every single drop of pleasure out of me that he could. He experimented as thoroughly as any scientist ever had, working out the best way to drive all objections from my head and melt me into a senseless puddle of pleasure. He used quick strokes, slow strokes, gentle teasing touches, harsh tugs, the flat of his palm, the scrape of his nail. He obviously knew every single way possible to drive a man entirely out of his mind, and was determined to use them on me.

I was hardly opposed to this. In fact, the exact opposite: I was _loving_ this. I gave a full bodied moan, and arched up against him. I clutched at his back, and dragged him as close to me as he was possibly able to go. I abandoned myself fully to pleasure, and felt not a single bit of regret at how shameless I had become. In fact, the only thought in my mind was that I needed _more_. More of him, more of this quickfire lust between us, more of the heedless pleasure. I didn’t think for even a moment, I just clutched onto him even harder than before and started rolling my hips up in the neediest way possible.

He laughed into my mouth, a low and filthy rumble that only served to drive me more out of my mind, and rolled back down against me in a brief and jerky movement. I had a moment to appreciate the warmth of his body against me, the pressure of his hips, the fact that his cock was just as hard and throbbing as mine was by this point…

And then Blake froze on top of me, a moment of unpleasant realization obviously going right through him.

I blinked and thrust my hips up against him again, but that didn’t get any reaction besides a further stiffening against me. Obviously this required further action. I made a sharp noise of protest, lifted my head until our lips were brushing just the slightest bit yet again…

And was startled when Blake withdrew from me all at once. Stared at me for a terrified moment from the edge of the bed, his own nightshirt so ruffled that I could see most of his thigh and just the faintest suggestion of his cock, before tumbling off of it backwards and scuttling out of the room without a single word more.

I was left sitting alone in the bed. Confused, and kiss bruised, and so hard that it hurt to move even a little bit.

\--

Perhaps a sensible man would’ve left Blake to whatever crisis he was having and picked the matter up in the far more sober light of morning, but I was not a sensible man even when the arousal had faded just a little. When I was capable of moving without my cock causing me pain, I rose from the bed and went in search of him post haste.

In the end I found him, somewhat improbably, perched on top of a cupboard in the second room in the downstairs of the house. For a moment all I could do was pause in the doorway, clutching the single candle I had lit so to better find my way around a dark and unfamiliar place, and stare at him incredulously. “How did you even get up there, Jeremiah?”

He didn’t answer me, but then he also didn’t immediately run away from me again so I supposed that was progress. All he did was remain in his highly uncomfortable looking position on top of his cupboard, staring down at me with terribly wary eyes.

“Look, I’m not here because I want to yell at you or call you out or accuse you of attacking my virtue or… Anything like that. I think it’s important to establish that from the start.” I took a slow step closer to him, immediately stopped the moment he tensed up before my eyes. “I just want to talk, because we’re probably going to be stuck here for at least a few days more and I don’t want to leave things awkward between us.”

He considered that for a long few moments, somehow managing to look solemn despite the ridiculously contorted position he’d put himself into. I waited him out patiently, willing him to open his mouth and speak his mind to me as he had so many other times in the past.

But when he did open his mouth, it was only to grace me with something deeply baffling. “I’m sorry.”

I blinked at him. Blinked again, even harder this time, as his words sunk in. I probably should’ve expected something like that, considering my intimate knowledge of Blake’s tendency to self-flagellate, but somehow I hadn’t been and as such I was absolutely stunned. “ _Why_?”

“It seems like the appropriate thing to say, when you’ve forced yourself on the person you care for most in the world,” Blake said grimly, although he did look a little startled at the vehemence of my shock. “And I’ll go even further than that, if you’ll let me. I’m sorry for allowing myself to share a bed with you, I’m sorry for falling asleep and waking up not in my right mind, I’m sorry for touching you without your consent, I’m sorry for kissing you without your consent, I’m sorry for clambering on top of you like an animal and forcing my lust upon you, I’m sorry for the fact that I intended to go further, I’m… Sorry. Just sorry, for everything.”

It was probably the most words that I’d ever heard him say in a row, and unfortunately every single one of them was absolutely baffling. I blinked again, considered my options in a slightly dazed way after that unexpected onslaught. In the end, there was only one possible thing I could say. “Did… Did I seem particularly unwilling?”

It was Blake’s turn to blink this time, even harder than I had. He was more than startled now, the expression spreading across his face could best be described as utterly and completely stunned.

“Because as far as I’m concerned I really enjoyed it,” I said mildly, as mildly as I could considering the way that my heart was currently thumping in my chest, and took another slow and testing step towards him. “And I thought that I was rather obvious about that, all things considered.”

“But you were surprised by what I did, Avery, you can’t deny that,” Blake said slowly, although with that familiar narrowing of his eyes that he always did when he was faced with a particularly juicy and unexpected mystery. “You were eager, I’ll admit that, but you had no idea what you were doing and that was just as obvious as your lust. I took advantage of you.”

“You really believe that?” I asked him sharply, and stopped restraining myself. There were only about five steps left between me and his cupboard, I took them quickly and was left standing at the base with my head tilted back to see him. “Look, I was shocked. It was totally unexpected, and I will admit that maybe I’m not as relaxed about this as I’m putting across at the moment. I never desired a man before I met you, have only realized incredibly recently that I _do_ actually desire you, and that may take a while to sink in.”

Blake’s jaw didn’t quite drop open, but it was a close run thing. He looked at me with incredibly wide eyes, having obviously been expecting anything other than such a comprehensive admission.

“But I want to let it sink in,” I said, very deliberately, and stretched up my free hand until it was touching the rough wood of the cupboard just under where his hand dangled. “I did enjoy it, Jeremiah. I would like to do it, and many more things, again. With you.”

“You… You shouldn’t want to,” Blake said, looking more uncertain than I’d ever seen him. He was usually a fairly confident man, fairly certain and precise in his way of seeing the world, but now his vulnerabilities were on display. For me, all of them for me. “Look at me, William. I am hardly the sort of man you, or anybody, should want to build a life with. I am old, and bitter, and twisted, and the only things I really have left are thwarted desires and a certain stubborn unwillingness to just give up and die. You should want better than me, you should want a future.”

“I acknowledge your point. It’s the most ridiculous thing that I’ve ever heard, but I acknowledge it,” I said dryly, and kept my head tilted right back so I could see his drawn face looking down at me. “But, for that matter, you shouldn’t want to build a life with me either. A rash young soldier, who came back from the wars with his mind fractured and an inability to fully please anyone. A boy who started out with every gift in the world, and took most of his life to realize that very few people were that lucky. A fool, who only properly opened his eyes the moment he met you.”

Blake looked like he wanted to protest that description of me, but instead bit his lip and remained silent. He kept staring down at me, awaiting my point with ill-concealed impatience.

I smiled up at him again, quite simple and quite sincere. “And you still want me anyway, don’t you?”

There was a long moment of silence, as Blake struggled with this, and to be honest I half expected him to throw my attempt back in my face and inform me that I was only a warm body who had happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But he didn’t. Instead he only gave a heavy sigh, and passed a reluctant hand over his face “...Definitely more than I should.”

“There you go, then,” I said, my voice barely more than an awestruck whisper, and arched up a little on my toes until my fingertips could just about brush up against his. “Please come down from on top of the cupboard? We don’t have to do anything, not tonight. We don’t even have to think about what this means until we’re safely back on my father’s estate, and have the room to figure out what the future looks like. But I think that it’s at least worth a try, don’t you?”

Blake stared down at me for a long moment with unreadable eyes. And then, to my utter and gleeful shock, gave a resigned sigh and shuffled his coiled up body right to the edge of his perch. “Move back a little, don’t want to land on you.”

I obeyed him, my heart in my throat in the very best of ways, and he slid down from the wardrobe with a deftness that surprised me even after all this time. Any other person would’ve at least fallen on their face, if not done themselves a serious injury. Blake only landed like a cat, and straightened up to his full height with a decidedly dubious expression upon his face.

“Thank you,” I said, even though it seemed utterly inadequate, and beamed at him from a very near distance.

Blake made it closer. He hesitated for a long moment, and then gave another one of his heavy sighs and stepped forward until we were standing practically toe to toe. “This is insane, you know. Utterly and absolutely cracked.”

“I know,” I said solemnly, and reached out to tentatively wrap my arms around him. His body was warm against me, and fragile in a way that I automatically wanted to take care of. “But my entire relationship with you, our entire relationship with each other, has been much the same way. And it’s still one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.”

Blake regarded me for a long moment from the circle of my arms, his face deliberately blank. And then he closed his eyes for a long moment, allowed his expression to become raw… And rose up on his own toes, to seal our mouths gently back together in another wonderful kiss.


End file.
